Monday, December 01, 2008

I Got the News

In handy bullet format, too!

So it turns out that, out of the 135 people currently involved in the Obama transition team, 85 are old Clinton hands. I guess you have to look at it this way: it's better that old Clinton hands are involved than really old Carter hands or really, really old LBJ hands. And Ramsey Clark isn't the only old LBJ hand out there. When you look at it, suddenly retreads like Larry Summers don't seem so bad. I do think they should alter the slogan to "(The More Things) Change (The More They Stay The Same) That You Can Believe In," although that makes it look like an old song title for the Human League.

On the topic of old Clinton hands, someone actually did notice that Barack Obama was pretty critical of Hillary Clinton's foreign policy chops during the campaign. The response the president-elect provided was pretty revealing, because it follows a pattern that Obama and Biden used during the campaign. When a tough question gets asked, they laugh at it, then deflect it. It's an effective tack for now, but some of the issues the Obama team will face aren't very funny. And it's not enough to slough off the words Candidate Obama said as mere rhetoric now.

Which brings us to the matter of Mumbai. Mitch Berg has an excellent essay at his place about the meaning of Mumbai and its implications for the rest of us. He ties what happened in Mumbai to the importance of understanding why the Second Amendment, at bottom, is the guarantor of all the other rights we have. "Citizens in any 'free society' should be a pack, not a herd or flock," Mitch concludes. Just so.